The present invention relates to a robot and a control method for it, and is suitably applied to a pet robot.
Of late, a four legged pet robot, which acts in accordance to directions from a user and surroundings, has been introduced and developed by this patent applicant. It is in the form of a dog or cat kept by an ordinary family and so designed as to take a lie-down posture upon receiving the xe2x80x98LIE-DOWNxe2x80x99 directions from the user, or to proffer its hand when the user extends his hand toward it.
However, if such a pet robot could behave more naturally like a living thing, the user may get a bigger sense of affinity and satisfaction. Therefore the entertaining quality of the pet robot will be substantially enhanced.
The present invention has been done considering this point and is intended to introduce a robot and a control method for it, which can increase the entertaining nature substantially.
In order to achieve this objective, a robot embodying the present invention comprises an external information read-in means for read in information from the outside, a detecting means for detecting a particular object based on the read-in information, a judging means for judging whether or not a detected object satisfies given conditions when it has been detected by the detecting means, and an action generation means for generating a corresponding action based on the judgment result obtained by the judging means. As a result, with this robot, more natural actions as a living thing does can be achieved.
Furthermore, a robot embodying the present invention is provided with three steps; 1) the step wherein external information is read in, based on which a particular object is detected, 2) another step wherein the detected object is judged whether or not it satisfies given conditions when it has been detected, and 3) yet another step wherein the robot generates a given action based on the judgment results. As a result, with the control method of this robot, more natural actions as a living thing does can be achieved by way of a robot.